Transforming Pedagogy and Practice: In the Pursuit of Justice for Multilingual Students of Color

• In Event: Cultivating the Radical Imagination: Praxis and Possibilities for Social Justice Education

Abstract

American society and its educational system are characterized by pervasive and ingrained racist ideas which have defended the interests of whiteness cross-generationally (Harris, 1993; Kendi, 2016; Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995). Throughout the history of the United States, many terms and concepts have cloaked the interests of whiteness. These terms, albeit purporting to be neutral, uphold systems of domination and exclusion, which continue to advance the interests of whiteness. Whiteness is thereby a “racialized privilege” and not simply a racial description, being positioned as “a legitimate and natural baseline;” it evolved “from color to race to status to property as a progression rooted in white supremacy and economic hegemony over Black and Native American peoples” (Harris, 1993, p. 1714). Today, the interests of whiteness continue to subordinate communities of color and suppress the power and potential of their ways of being and communicating via its “unfettered right to exclude” (p. 1715). As such, whiteness serves as the antithesis of freedom.
Within the context of schooling, biological inferiority (supported by scientific racism) and cultural deficit paradigms have rendered pathological portrayals of children and communities of color cross-generationally. Such racist portrayals veil the harm caused by systems whereby children and youth of color were excluded in and by schooling. To be sure, in the US, children and youth of color have experienced “substantive and de facto inequities in the education system” (Harris, 1993, p. 1754); as such, to foster justice in and through education, we must engage in identifying the harm caused and commit to reparations.
In this paper, I focus on multilingual learners of color, naming and addressing the intersectional harm experienced; after all, language competence and communicative repertoires are deeply racialized constructs. I position social justice pedagogy and practice as possible pathways for addressing the harm inflicted cross-generationally on communities of color and to start the process of reparations. Reparations, “the legal principle of restitution…as applied to crimes against humanity” (p. 147) are “a type of compensation used to redress an injury or some other type of injustice” (Muhammad, 2013, p. 152). Given injustices experienced by multilingual individuals and communities of color in and through schooling, I posit that social justice pedagogies must “officially acknowledge aspects of…undisputed history and…provide restitution for these historical wrongs” (p. 150).

Author

• Mariana Souto-Manning, Teachers College, Columbia University